looks pretty good, but I think an extra continent is possible for the game on this map to be more interesting, how about adding Taiwan as a territory? And then make Taiwan, Korea, and Japan belong to the continent of "Japanese Empire". Also, Taiwan is called "Formosa" in the early 20th century (I think), so maybe you should include that instead to be historically accurate.

Joodoo wrote:looks pretty good, but I think an extra continent is possible for the game on this map to be more interesting, how about adding Taiwan as a territory? And then make Taiwan, Korea, and Japan belong to the continent of "Japanese Empire".

Done - excellent suggestion. Points for Joodoo.

I have also added territories to both African regions and to Europe (Portugal).

My biggest gameplay concern is this: players are used to having easy bonuses they can wrap up fairly quickly. This map has three small regions - Japan, SE Asia, and the Middle East - which would put all of the early action in the Eastern half of the world. In addition, the nest two easiest to hold regions will be Southern Africa and Oceania, which means Europe will be a wasteland to begin the game.

Possible solution #1: split Europe into two regions, perhaps by making Scandinavia (Norway, Iceland, Sweden) its own +1 continent a la Japanese Empire.

Possible solution #2: give direct-deployment bonuses to regions with what would have been major cities in 1900. In terms of population, he largest cities on this map will be London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo, and St. Petersburg. This would make the European part of the map significantly more interesting, especially in the early going; by making them auto-deployed they would be less beneficial later in the game once everybody has carved out their corners of the world. The cities could be made neutral to start, or not - I wouldn't have a problem with handing out a few auto-deployed bonuses on a map that is this large.

Joodoo wrote:looks pretty good, but I think an extra continent is possible for the game on this map to be more interesting, how about adding Taiwan as a territory? And then make Taiwan, Korea, and Japan belong to the continent of "Japanese Empire".

Done - excellent suggestion. Points for Joodoo.

oaktown wrote:My biggest gameplay concern is this: players are used to having easy bonuses they can wrap up fairly quickly. This map has three small regions - Japan, SE Asia, and the Middle East - which would put all of the early action in the Eastern half of the world.

to make the japanese empire bonus more difficult to gain, u can add karafuto (the southern half of sakhalin island). this was japanese until 1945.

oaktown wrote:Possible solution #2: give direct-deployment bonuses to regions with what would have been major cities in 1900. In terms of population, he largest cities on this map will be London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo, and St. Petersburg. This would make the European part of the map significantly more interesting, especially in the early going; by making them auto-deployed they would be less beneficial later in the game once everybody has carved out their corners of the world. The cities could be made neutral to start, or not - I wouldn't have a problem with handing out a few auto-deployed bonuses on a map that is this large.

i'm supportive of this, with initially-neutral cities. this represents an advantage for holding industrially-developed areas that are capable of producing armaments, which is entirely logical.

to better reflect the historical balance of power, are u receptive to a more radical idea, that is to keep the current continental connections largely unchanged, but detach each continent visually, as on the usa map? i'd like the most powerful continent of the time, europe, to be twice as big so that it can have more territories (for example in the austrian empire), while africa can be shrunk significantly into one continent with fewer territories, since most of the warriors were armed only with spears. i also propose that the bonus key is moved to siberia and that russia's eastern territories are all merged into one called siberia (freeing up some space to stretch europe and southern asia vertically). it seems that every single map we have that has russia on it gives too much power to someone who holds all of russia, whereas russia was an extremely backward feudal society at the time.

oaktown wrote:Possible solution #2: give direct-deployment bonuses to regions with what would have been major cities in 1900. In terms of population, he largest cities on this map will be London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo, and St. Petersburg. This would make the European part of the map significantly more interesting, especially in the early going; by making them auto-deployed they would be less beneficial later in the game once everybody has carved out their corners of the world. The cities could be made neutral to start, or not - I wouldn't have a problem with handing out a few auto-deployed bonuses on a map that is this large.

Good idea.

Also, large territories such as French West Africa and Siberia should be split up.

And to prevent the first players from having an advantage, a certain number of random territories could start as neutral. Or some of the smaller territories such as Norway and Sweeden could be combined.

Finland was a part of the Russian Empire for over a century, until the revolution.

Sea attack routes have been restored - I goofed on the last upload.

Splitting up large territories v. shriking and combining politically insignificant territories: I can already see that this is going to be the issue that will plague the development of this map. If you are familiar with my past maps you'll know that I like to approximate the style of maps from the era I'm representing; creating a side-map for Europe would be a bit abstract and post-modern for an Edwardian map, so I'd like to keep the representation of the continents as-is.

That said, as this is a political map more than a geographic-themed map, I would like to explore ways to give more weight to key industrial centers and global resources. I will be taking additional liberties with geography to increase the size of the european territories (if for no reason other than to allow for army counts), and I would like to merge a couple of the russian territories, because like Ian said CC maps (e.g. Classic) give far too much weight to areas like Kamchatka which have rarely played a major role in world politics.

Here's a thought: we could create an Empire Bonus for holding territories spread out across the globe, eg. the British Empire. It wouldn't be easy to hold, but early in the game a smart and subtle player could acquire a significant bonus without drawing much attention. I believe this is achievable given our XML constraints by nesting variable bonuses, but I'll have to check on it. We could set it up so that you have to hold one City (Tokyo, Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg) as well as at least one territory in each of seven regions. They would have to over-ride each other - no holding London Empire as well as Paris Empire - and the cities should definitely start neutral so nobody starts the game with a lucky bonus.

One characteristic about this map that bugs me right now: Africa's bottleneck relative to the rest of the map. Someone gets those two bonuses at some point, and it will fairly easy to defend. Two solutions: add ocean routes to Australia or the southern bit of Asia (preferred), or drop the southern African bonus.

i'll be interested to see how the empire bonus turns out. holding eight territories in different regions looks very tough.

another idea, inspired by the new world map, is for certain colonies to be marked by symbols as belonging to an empire. the imperial power can one-way attack these colonies at any time. for example, a red anchor symbol might be put on india, australia, new zealand and south africa to show that they are british colonies and that great britain can one-way attack them. this means it will be important to hold the imperial powers (great britain, france, germany, the netherlands, portugal, st petersburg and japan), especially later in the game, as a way to project ur forces.

iancanton wrote:i'll be interested to see how the empire bonus turns out. holding eight territories in different regions looks very tough.

another idea, inspired by the new world map, is for certain colonies to be marked by symbols as belonging to an empire. the imperial power can one-way attack these colonies at any time. for example, a red anchor symbol might be put on india, australia, new zealand and south africa to show that they are british colonies and that great britain can one-way attack them. this means it will be important to hold the imperial powers (great britain, france, germany, the netherlands, portugal, st petersburg and japan), especially later in the game, as a way to project ur forces.

Either idea works for me... I like the notion of Imperial Powers one-way attacking out, and it would solve Tactix's concern about Africa (which I'd noticed earlier, but I figured that if anybody is able to mop up the whole thing they deserve a break!). But rather than a straight-up attack I might allow the Imperial Powers to bombard territories in their empire - this allows the Europeans to hold off incursion by their enemies while not entirely retaining control, which is the whole idea of this map - Empires are beginning to crumble.

This could ultimately be a more important feature than an auto-deployed extra army. I'll work on that one.

Alright, this map is starting to come together... thanks for all of the suggestions!

I've added capital cities: London, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Tokyo. Is there a more accurate word than "capital" cities? Because technically there are many more capitals on this map, these are just the key centers of imperial power. I guess I could just call them Imperial Powers. Duh.

Germany, France, and Britain can now bombard their colonial holdings... I could also add Portugal and show its holdings in both east and west africa if you think that works. Great Britain just became a very important territory on this map - as it should be considering the time period - though while it can wield great influence through its disruptions (bombardments) abroad it can't do much in terms of actual expansion. Again, I think this fits the theme of empires falling.

I dont know if im digging the whole bombardment thing. I think classic gameplay will be a winner on this one. If you keep the bombardment your going to have to consider upping the african bonuses since there much much harder to hold now.

Slow morning so I stumbled in here. I've got something for your gameplay though. 65 territories makes a good size for 8 player escalating games, so I'd support standard bonuses with no auto-deploy. That sort of thing overvalues certain territories early in the game and leads to ugly moves. You do have a lot (4, or 6 without bombardments) of isolated territories. That is, places adjacent to only 1 territory (Portugal, Liberia, Nepal, Arabia, with New Zealand and Madagascar reachable by artillery). This really slows down an escalating game because blocks are so easy to establish and maintain. Consider 6 player games played on Europe vs Arctic. Both give players 8 territories like this one does, but Arctic only has 2 isolated while Europe has 4, and Arctic moves a lot faster. Having 6 would make the game slower than Europe, and 4 isn't exactly ideal either. I wager you could fix it by keeping bombardments and making an attack route between Arabia and Persia.

thanks, bald, for counting up the dead ends; I don't like them because they are usually out of play by round three of most games, and never come back into play until players start getting eliminated. I'm leaning toward keeping the colonial bombardments, which takes care of some of them, and as I tinker I'll work on eliminating more.

I think it's not giving China any credit to not give them their own capital. I agree with Bald that the +1 autodeploy is a bit much for the gameplay, simply bombardment is enough. Highlighting the capitals is still a good idea, as it'll add to the historic context of the map.

Alright, I'm starting to play with what this map might eventually look like. I'm aware that most of the borders and coastlines still need to be redrawn to look realistic - I did the Oceania lines right to begin with, elsewhere everything it too flat.

And the map still needs a proper legend - the info at the bottom is just to tell you what does what.

AndyDufresne wrote:But I will say...those millipede mountains are horrendously frightening.

Do you think adding Ceylon (Sri Lanka and former British colony) to South East Asia would improve gameplay? And also, how about a sea route from the Ottoman Empire to Somalia or from Arabia to Somalia? Also, Burma and Afghanistan were British colonies.